


faith, hope, all that bullshit

by shinealightonme



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Communication, Family, Fluff and Angst, Future Fic, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Minor Richard Gansey III/Blue Sargent, Post-Canon, Pynch Week, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-30
Updated: 2017-07-30
Packaged: 2018-12-08 16:28:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11650389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinealightonme/pseuds/shinealightonme
Summary: Ronan never actually proposes. Adam doesn't technically say yes. If they wind up married Adam is going to count it as a freakingmiracle.





	faith, hope, all that bullshit

**Author's Note:**

> Successfully finished this in time for pynchweek 2017! Day one, prompt: Something new.

It isn't very romantic, when it happens, but it is very Ronan, and Adam knows which of those two he prefers.

He's been home winter break of his junior year for all of half a day before Ronan drags him out onto the grounds to help with the endless chores around the farm. Opal races off into the trees to taunt the deer, and it starts to rain.

They take shelter in the nearest barn. Ronan climbs up to the loft; Adam hangs around the door to peer outside for Opal. It's only rain, but he worries. She might catch cold. She never has before, but he feels like when she does it'll be spectacularly awful.

The entire world smells like cow and wet hay, and Ronan has a funny expression on his face when he half-climbs, half-jumps down from the loft.

"I have something for you."

"Oh?" Ronan's tone puts Adam on alert. Something is going on. "What is it?"

"Dream thing," Ronan says.

"Okay."

"Close your eyes."

Something is definitely going on. "Can I get more of a definition than _dream thing_?"

Ronan scowls. "No."

Adam sighs deeply and shuts his eyes in the most ostentatious way possible. "If this is something unpleasant, I am going to make you very unhappy."

"Quit bitching and hold out your hands."

Adam nearly opens his eyes at that. "I'm not kidding, if this is gross -- "

"Christ, Parrish, would you shut up already?"

Adam shuts up and holds out his hands, palms up. Waits for Ronan to place something in them. Instead, Ronan takes his left hand, runs a thumb along Adam's palm, and turns it over. He slides something cold and metallic onto Adam's ring finger.

Adam's eyes slam back open. Maybe he misunderstood; maybe if he looks down, it won't be --

But he can't look away from Ronan's face. Ronan is doing a shit job of pretending that he doesn't care about what's going on right now, and that tells Adam exactly what he needs to know.

"So, dream ring." Adam thinks he's pretty coherent, considering he can't breathe and his heart is two seconds away from exploding.

Ronan jerks a nod. "Yup. Didn't spend a month's salary on it. If you care."

"You don't have a salary," Adam points out. "It doesn't -- does it _do_ anything that I need to know about?"

Ronan breaks off eye contact, looks back down at Adam's hands. Adam continues to stare at his face.

Ronan turns the ring around his finger. It's all Adam can do not to jump. He has never been this acutely aware of every sensation in his hands, and that includes the time they were possessed and moved on their own.

"If you wear it," Ronan answers, "then you have to marry me."

"Yeah, normal rings do that too," Adam says. "It's not going to, I don't know, give me nightmares, or -- "

Ronan scowls at this insult to his creation. Whatever. Adam has _forgiven_ Ronan for the nightmare tree, for six months of thinking he was going to kill Gansey, but he has not _forgotten_. "It's just a nice ring, fuck."

Adam finally looks at the ring. It is nice. Not very flashy. Two gold bands intertwined around each other, set with three dark stones. Not diamonds, though that's all Adam can tell. _Recognizing precious gems_ is not a skill he's ever needed to develop. And given this came from Ronan's dreams, there's no reason for them to be anything that exist in nature.

"Why -- " he hesitates " -- now?"

Ronan shrugs, as though admitting that he's holding back makes his omission less of a lie. Adam supposes it does. "Declan's pissing himself 'cause he thinks Ashley's going to make him propose. I want to make him look bad."

"Okay, but after we spite your brother we'd still be _married._ "

Saying it out loud ought to rob the thing of its power. Demystify it. Blunt its fangs.

It does not.

"Yup. Then you're stuck with me."

"Sorry if I don't think that's a good enough reason -- "

Ronan looks away, but he's too close to Adam to fool him. Shoulders up, chest tight, hands taut; a defensive stance, like he's expecting a blow. Or just taken one.

"It's not the real reason," and Ronan sounds so betrayed by that, by Adam making him state out loud that they love each other. Adam finds it sort of crass too, but if they're going to _get married, holy shit,_ they should be able to talk about things like that. "If you don't want to -- "

Adam curls his hand awkwardly around Ronan's, before he can do anything stupid like take the ring back. "Fuck no, Lynch. You can't _un-propose_ to me."

"What do you care? You're going to say no anyway."

"The hell I am." Adam feels strangely like this moment isn't happening now. Like it's a premonition, a terrifying one, but not one that he wants to change. He already knows how it's going to end. He wants it to end that way.

He just knows it's going to hurt, first.

Adam wraps his arm around Ronan and turns his face into his neck. Ronan is not the only one who is lousy at important conversations, and it helps if he doesn't have to make eye contact for this part.

Besides, he has a lot of good memories of Ronan's neck.

Ronan is as soft and warm as a glacier, but Adam can't judge. He's so tense he's surprised he's not shaking.

They are going to spend the rest of their lives being _so bad_ at this.

"We're not getting married while we live in different states, that's stupid," Adam says. "Long distance already sucks enough. But I'm keeping this ring and we're going to ruin Declan's Christmas and then sometime after graduation we'll get married." And maybe by then Adam's pulse will have slowed down.

Ronan breathes, which makes Adam realize that he hadn't been. "You're not saying no."

"I'm not saying no. It's almost like I'm saying yes."

"I'd buy that if you hadn't freaked the fuck out first," Ronan says, and then he comes to life, throws his arms around Adam's shoulders tight. " _Fuck._ You scared the shit out of me."

"I scared _you_?" Adam's voice breaks, which is the fifth least embarrassing thing that's happened to him today. "You scared the shit out of _me_ , who ambushes someone with an engagement ring?"

"It's just a ring." Ronan brushes his lips against the top of Adam's head, and adds, muffled, "I thought you knew that's what I wanted."

"Forever," Adam says softly. "Yeah. But the ring makes it -- fuck." He doesn't know what, exactly, the ring makes it, besides _strange_ and _official_ and _still scary as hell, if no longer the scariest thing that Adam can imagine_. "Do I have to get you one?"

"Do whatever you want. You don't even have to wear that one."

"Stop trying to take it back." Adam pulls his left hand up to where he can look at it. It is a nice ring, as long as he pretends it's not on his hand. "It does do something terrible, doesn't it? I knew it, what is it -- "

"Jesus fuck, you're weird," Ronan says. "At least Declan's commitment phobia is a real thing. Who the hell is scared of a piece of jewelry?"

Adam snaps, without thinking, "We didn't all grow up with fairy tale marriages -- " and then he hears the words coming out of his mouth. Feels dizzy, and more than a little glad that he's holding onto Ronan. "Oh."

Ronan doesn't speak, just kisses the top of Adam's head again and lets him process.

It goes like this: anger, and then shame, and then tired resignation, that he's still dealing with this, that he may never be all the way through _dealing with this._

His parents must have loved each other at some point. They probably had a better reason to get married than trolling someone's older brother. They were probably excited. It's hard to imagine they'd screwed up the proposal any worse than Adam just did.

So Adam knows, deep in his bones, that loving Ronan and hurting Ronan aren't mutually exclusive.

But now that he knows what he's looking at, he finds that it's only the ghost of an old fear. Lingering, frightening when he spots it out of the corner of his eye, but ultimately insubstantial.

"I think I know why I freaked out."

"No kidding," Ronan says. More quietly, "That's not going to be us."

"I know," Adam says.

"We already have a kid. We haven't screwed her up yet."

"She's running around in the rain. Probably eating bugs."

"Fine, we screwed her up a little. But I'd fuck up way worse on my own. Don't do that to the kid."

Adam doesn't believe that, but it gets a smile out of him anyway. "Are you saying we have to get married so Opal won't be a bastard?"

"She's a Lynch, she's always going to be a bastard."

Adam finds the courage to look Ronan in the eye.

Ronan looks a touch freaked out, if Adam's honest with himself.

There's this: that Adam has hurt Ronan without trying. That someday he might _try,_ dig in claws and rip Ronan apart.

But there's this, too: that Ronan knows about slaying nightmares. That Ronan has seen Adam at his most monstrous.

That Adam has already been a monster, and worked his way back to human.

Adam smiles at Ronan, helplessly.

Ronan's voice is not as gruff as it could be when he says "That's what I was looking for in the first place, jackass."

"You were a step ahead of me," Adam says. "Sometimes -- you have to wait on me a little, okay? I'm not fearless like you are."

"Adam," Ronan breathes, presses their foreheads together, "you're perfect," and Adam finds his footing again. He knows how to be this person. He can press his lips against Ronan's without worrying that one small gesture will destroy both of them.

One of Adam's favorite surprises about Ronan, that shouldn't have been a surprise at all: the sweet, slow, thorough way that he kisses, as though this is the only thing in the world that matters, as though they have all of time and nothing to fear.

Adam clings to Ronan and doesn't think about anything at all.

At some point there's a click-clack of hooves over the wooden floor, and Opal says, "Gross."

Ronan kisses Adam's lips one last time, then his cheek, then his ear, turning toward Opal.

"Hey, brat, we're getting married."

The pronouncement still makes Adam's heart race, but it's about fifty percent nerves and fifty percent excitement and zero percent _mortal terror_ , so that's okay. That's a reasonable reaction to getting engaged, he thinks.

He looks at Opal, who is dripping wet and holding a clump of muddy weeds in one hand for reasons that must make sense to her.

" _Macte_ ," she says, as solemn as ever. "You're still gross."

"She's has a point, Lynch." Adam untangles himself from Ronan and then, on second thought, takes his hand. "We're pretty terrible."

Ronan scoffs, but doesn't let go. "Whatever. You know you love me."

"Yeah," Adam says, "I do."

-

They don't manage to _ruin_ Declan's Christmas, exactly, but they definitely throw him for a loop. He keeps trailing off in the middle of conversations to stare at Ronan in a confused sort of horror, like _Ronan is getting married_ refuses to process and keeps popping back up in his mind, demanding an explanation.

On Christmas Eve, while Ronan, Opal, and Matthew have an exuberant snowball fight outside, Declan corners Adam in the kitchen for an unending ten minutes of "Really? Are you _sure_? _Really_ sure?" It would be painful, or at least awkward, if Adam hadn't had exactly the right amount of eggnog over the course of the evening.

"Declan," Adam says, interrupting the thirtieth iteration of _not that I'm saying you're ruining your life but have you considered you're ruining your life_ , "I think we understand each other enough that I can say I know what I'm doing, and you'll believe me. Right?"

Declan makes a face, like he does whenever Adam tries to relate to him on a deeper level than _guy who used to go to the same school as me and is sleeping with my brother_. God forbid a Lynch have feelings and not be allergic to talking about them.

"Look, Parrish, I know you're smart," Declan says. "But you're also a stubborn little shit, which means if you did realize you'd made a mistake you'd be just as likely to stick it out as you would be to leave." Well, he's not wrong about that in general; just in how it relates to the matter at hand. "But if we do understand each other, then I don't want you to feel like you have to go through with anything. If you need someone else to get you out of it, I'm not afraid to be the bad guy."

It dawns on Adam, in a belated, horrified, amused way, that Declan is trying to look out for him. He's going about it completely backwards, insulting Adam and saying the complete opposite of what he means, and he's mostly succeeded in making Adam want to throttle him, but -- he cares.

Adam has a new sense of sympathy for Ronan, and is more impressed than ever before with the semi-functional relationship Ronan and Declan have cobbled together in the last few years. It turns out that relating to Declan on a deeper level than _guy who used to go to the same school as me and is the brother of the guy I'm sleeping with_ is hard work.

"I promise, I'm not sticking it out to save face," Adam says. "And we're not getting married for a year and a half. That ought to be a long enough engagement to convince you that we're not rushing into things."

"Right, because Ronan would never play high-stakes chicken for a year and a half," says a man who has absolutely seen Ronan do that very thing.

"Ronan might, but I wouldn't," Adam says. "Why are you so convinced this is going to be a disaster?"

"You're only twenty-one," Declan says, with the grand authority of someone who has reached the august and wise age of _twenty-two_ and therefore knows what he is talking about. "No one gets married at twenty-one."

"A lot of people do. They just aren't your sort of people."

Declan has the grace to look embarrassed. It endears him to Adam, and right then, he needs a lot of endearing.

"We're going to be fine," Adam says. "Or if we aren't, it won't be because of a ring."

Declan nods at him. "Fair enough."

Adam taps his fingers along the window sill. Outside, a tree branch drops a load of snow right on Matthew's head. Matthew laughs so hard he falls over. It's a slice of nostalgic holiday Americana that shouldn't exist in real life, but then, most of Adam's life shouldn't exist. He's gotten rather used to the impossible.

"You aren't going to have this conversation with Ronan, are you?" Adam asks. "Because you'd only make him double down, and I'm too busy to elope."

"I'm not an idiot," Declan says.

Adam snorts.

"You're the one volunteering to join this train-wreck, I don't think you can judge who's in their right mind," Declan says. "But if this is what you want, then. Welcome to the family." And he gives Adam one of those stiff-armed hugs that straight men use to close business deals.

Adam watches, dumbfounded, as Declan pours himself a very large glass of eggnog and wanders further into the house.

Adam goes out to sit on the porch. He's not dressed for it. The Barns always gets more than its fair share of snow in winter. More flowers in spring, more thunderstorms in summer, more colors in autumn, more _life_ and more _presence_ than anywhere else in the world.

Right at this moment, it feels like a blessing, and also like Adam should grab his coat.

But he doesn't. He watches Ronan and Matthew and Opal pelting each other with snowballs and marvels at the picture they make. Stormy and sunny, dreamer and dream, harsh laughter and stitched-together hearts and tiny feet skimming over the snow to loud accusations of cheating.

He's shivering by the time Ronan drops down to a seat on the porch next to him.

"Are you drunk?"

"A bit," Adam says, and Ronan unbuttons his coat to wrap it around both of them.

"Your hands are freezing," Ronan complains, which doesn't stop him from yanking them under his armpits.

"You just think that because you're too warm." Ronan _is_ warm, sweating under his coat, and Adam has to remind himself that Matthew and Opal are below them on the lawn. He wants to lick Ronan's neck.

"Idiot. What'd you even come out here for?"

"I don't know." Adam shrugs as best as he can without dislodging himself from Ronan. "I had the weirdest conversation with Declan."

"Deal with it." Ronan peels off a glove and presses his hand against Adam's cheek. "I can't murder him on Christmas."

"Are there days of the year you are allowed to commit fratricide?"

"No, fucking Cain ruined it for the rest of us. If Declan pisses you off you'll have to kill him yourself."

"I can't, though," Adam says. "He's going to be my brother, too."

"It's too late to back out. You should have thought about that before you sort of said yes."

"No, I don't think that's a bad thing," Adam insists. "I think -- I'm looking forward to that." Declan and Matthew as his brothers -- having brothers -- but that's more than he's allowed to want.

"You're getting hypothermia," Ronan says, "it's going to your brain."

"I mean it," Adam says, because he does, even if it's greedy. "This is going to be our family."

Ronan pulls back enough to look down at him, and Adam can't parse what the expression on his face means, can't interpret the length of time that Ronan spends studying him, not speaking.

"I know," Ronan says, and then Opal and Matthew tromp up the stairs and sweep them all into the warm indoors.

-

Adam should have predicted that Gansey would be weird about the engagement.

Or, Adam _did_ predict that Gansey would be weird, he just failed to anticipate _how_ weird.

In hindsight, they should have told Gansey over the phone and let him get all his emotions out of the way before they had to see him in person. But Ronan hates phones, and Adam doesn't know how to just _bring it up_ in casual conversation, and it turns out that getting engaged does tremendous things for one's sex life, so on the whole Adam's been a little too busy to figure out the best way to break the news to their friends.

But maybe he should have found the time to send Gansey a text or something, because this is _ridiculous_ :

"Adam Parrish," Gansey says, in a tone of voice that can only be appropriately followed by _don't move_ or _duck_ or _you've doomed us all_.

Adam freezes, wondering what terrible fate is about to befall him. It was a fluke he survived Aglionby. He should have known it wasn't going to last. He just didn't expect the end to come for him in the middle of Christmas brunch while he's pouring coffee in the kitchen of the Barns. Terrible fates should not catch up to you while you're wearing pajamas.

But all Gansey does is snatch at Adam's hand and hold it up to his face to examine -- 

Oh. Right. The ring.

He _knew_ that ring was going to do something awful someday.

"What is this?" Gansey blurts out, because that is how every important conversation Adam has ever had with Gansey starts. One of them blurts something out, and the other one overreacts, and five or ten or a thousand minutes later they calm down enough to talk.

Just once Adam would like to skip the part where they overreact. He's had enough of that for a lifetime. "Uh. An engagement ring."

Somewhere in the real world, Blue is shaking her head and giving Ronan a fist bump, because Blue Sargent is better than the rest of them put together.

Back in Adam's ridiculous world, Gansey is still staring at his ring. It's something like vindication: _see, Ronan, rings are a big deal_. But probably if Adam's yardstick for normal behavior is Gansey, then Ronan was right in the first place.

"When did this happen!"

"A year ago," Ronan says, "you just noticed?"

Gansey's face falls. He'll work out that Ronan is messing with him as soon as he starts thinking logically, but that might not be for a long time yet. Adam decides to intervene before they have to suffer through a lot of hurt feelings about _keeping secrets_.

"Last week," he says.

Gansey's face brightens.

Way, way. _Way_ too bright.

"When's the wedding?"

"Ten minutes," Ronan says. "You're giving me away."

"Next summer, after graduation." Adam glares at Ronan. "Would you stop screwing with his head?"

"His head is already screwed up, how is that my fault?"

It's hard to argue with that when Gansey is practically _glowing_.

"This is the greatest Christmas I have ever had," Gansey says.

Adam snatches his hand back. No chance they were going to skip the _overreacting_ part of the conversation, then.

"We aren't getting married as a present to you, creep," Ronan says.

"I don't care," Gansey declares. "My friends are happy. This is all I ask from life. _I'm_ happy."

"Gansey," Blue says in that voice of hers that bears no argument. "Why don't you go lie down in the other room until you're less weird?"

He goes, because he would walk off a cliff if sensible, dictatorial Blue told him to.

But he does stop in the doorway and _announce_ , in that regal way of his, "You are my friends and I love you both, dearly," and then he beats a hasty retreat, because even kings are not immune to having scones thrown at their heads.

"Jesus," Ronan swears, dusting crumbs off his hands, "why does Gansey care more about our wedding than we do?"

"Because you're both emotionally stunted people," Blue says.

"Fuck you," Ronan says agreeably.

"Not to prove your point, but he never technically asked me to marry him," Adam tells Blue. "He just put the ring on my finger."

"What, and you stood still long enough for him to catch you?" Blue wrinkles her nose. "That's on you, Adam."

Ronan jostles Blue with his arm, which is the Ronan equivalent of picking her up and twirling her through the air. "See? Sargent gets it."

"You're a lousy feminist," Adam says.

"You're a lousy host," Blue chimes back. "Quit hogging the coffee."

As though it wasn't entirely her boyfriend's fault that Adam forgot he was holding the coffee in the first place. He finishes pouring himself a cup and hands the pot over to her.

Or he tries to. Ronan intercepts it and pours virtually all of the remaining coffee into his own mug, until it's all but overflowing.

Then he holds the nearly empty pot out to Blue, as gallant as he can manage, which is pretty damn gallant.

Blue swipes his too-full coffee mug instead, spilling half of it.

Ronan scowls at her and drinks straight from the coffee pot.

Two utterly ridiculous people: Blue doesn't even _like_ her coffee black, and there's no way that drinking from the pot is any fun for Ronan. But they stick it out, glaring and waiting for the other one to break first.

Adam feels a powerful longing to tell them both how wonderful they are and how much he loves them, but Gansey ruined that for everybody, so he just mutters "idiots" and drinks his own damn coffee.

-

Midwinter is the big winter holiday for 300 Fox Way, and Gansey already put in the requisite appearance at his mother's photo opportunities, so Adam and Ronan have their friends to themselves from Christmas morning through New Year's.

After Blue and Gansey's road year when Adam couldn't reliably make contact with either of them, and after the last two years split by three college schedules, three sets of family obligations, four delicate temperaments -- it's a little surreal to have them around. Adam is conditioned to expect very small quantities of the things he wants from life; having Gansey and Blue crashing in one of the guest rooms at the Barns for an entire week feels gluttonous. Unsustainable.

Also, just, _embarrassing,_ when he walks into the living room at exactly the wrong moment and sees Blue squeeze Gansey's ass.

Adam is a mature and responsible adult, and he handles it in the most grown up way possible: he pretends to throw up and hurries out of the room like his eyes are melting out of his face. Ronan might be a bad influence on him.

Of course, Blue has to get her revenge.

"So," Blue says imperiously, leaning against the barn door to block Adam's escape route. "Marriage."

"Is a custom going back to the beginning of human civilization." Adam sets down the pitchfork and wipes his forehead, because he has a feeling he isn't going to get a lot of work done in the foreseeable future. "Are you working on one of your anthropology papers, or -- "

"God, you're going to be stupid about this, aren't you?"

"Probably," Adam says, "if we assume past performance is an indicator of future results."

"You know that thing where you're self-deprecating and you attack yourself before anyone else can? It wasn't that deep when we were seventeen. It's really not deep now."

"If it's what you're expecting from me, then I'd hate to disappoint you."

Blue throws a fistful of hay at him. It flutters to the floor in anti-climactic bunches.

"You _know_ what I mean," she says.

Because all mortal men must obey the decrees of the great Blue Sargent. Adam finds himself getting annoyed at the question.

"I don't, actually," he says. "Are you going to give me one of those 'it's not too late to change your mind' lectures? Because I've had enough of those, thanks."

"What? _No_ ," and Blue says it like she means it, like the thought wouldn't have occurred to her in a million years. That goes a long way toward calming Adam down. He can handle that treatment from Declan. But from Blue, from one of the few people he really knows and trusts and loves -- it would have cut him, deeper than he wants to admit. "Why would I say that?"

"I don't know. Just assume I have a lot of doubts getting thrown in my face."

"Like anyone couldn't see you and Ronan are perfect for each other," Blue says.

"You think so?"

"Ugh, don't fish for compliments," Blue says, but before Adam can react to that, "yes, _obviously_ , and it's not like either of you is going to find anyone else to put up with you. Definitely lock that down now."

"Sorry, is this you giving me a compliment? Because it doesn't sound like it."

Blue stares him down. "This is me wondering why you need me to validate your choices for you in the first place."

"I don't," Adam snaps. "But if you start off like you're going to try to talk me out of it, then yeah, I'm going to get pissed off."

"Why would I try to talk you out of it?" Blue asks. "I like you. I even like _Ronan_ , and I like him better when he's happy, which for whatever reason means when he's dating you."

"Then why did you start this conversation?"

"Um, because I want to hear about what you're up to?" Blue says. "Because when you surprise people with big important life news, we're going to want details? Because you get up too much inside your own head," Blue steps forward and taps her knuckles against her forehead, "and I worry about you?"

"Oh."

"Who the hell tries to talk someone out of getting engaged?" Blue says.

"Declan," Adam answers, "but I _think_ he meant well."

"Yeah, no, I'm not convinced Declan _means_ anything." Blue has a grudge against Declan. It might be due to a specific event he doesn't know about, or it might just be down to class in late capitalist America and gender roles in modern politics and every other damn thing that makes Adam tired to think about. "If he's telling you not to do something that's a good sign you should go for it, right?"

Adam snorts. "That's basically the same logic Ronan used for why we should get married in the first place."

Blue rolls her eyes. Adam and Gansey have never managed to get either Blue or Ronan to admit that they have anything in common. The last attempt turned into an uncomfortable conversation about why Adam and Gansey are so fixated on comparing their significant others, which Adam has blocked from his memory.

"Whatever, or don't be happy," Blue says. "It doesn't matter to _me_."

"You say that, but if Ronan and I break up Gansey is going to spend every waking second for the rest of his life trying to fix us."

Blue makes a horrified face. "Oh God. You're not kidding about that."

"I'm really not."

"I will make sure you two get married if it's the last thing I do," Blue says. "You can't leave him. Please. For my sanity. Even though he swears and drinks and has shitty taste in music. Even though his brother is an asshole."

Adam rolls his eyes. "Yeah, because _Ronan's_ family is so bad."

"Oh." Blue sobers, instantly. "Have you told your parents?"

He looks back down at the ring. If it were a real thing -- a thing made in the world, passing through miners and craftspeople and jewelry stores -- it would be far too valuable to ever touch Adam Parrish.

"No," he says. "I write my mother a letter when I have news that would make her proud, but -- I don't think this qualifies."

"It _should_ ," Blue says heatedly, "but I know what you mean."

She doesn't, but she thinks she does, and today Adam is willing to accept that.

"Thanks." He has to clear his throat a couple of times. "I don't know -- what Ronan's hoping for. In terms of a ceremony. I don't have anything in mind. But -- "

Blue looks at him quizzically.

He can't blame her. He doesn't know what the hell he's saying, and he's the one saying it.

"I don't really have people for my side. So, if I knew you could be there, with me -- "

"Adam," Blue mercifully cuts him off. "Are you asking me to be your best man?"

Adam shrugs. "Just, don't be in Argentina or anything next summer, okay?"

Blue pops up on her tip-toes to kiss him on the cheek.

"Deal."

-

The best man conversation makes Adam realize that he doesn't have a clue what Ronan wants for a ceremony, or whether he's thought about it. Adam hasn't -- he'd been too fixated on the concept of _marriage_ to worry about the concept of _wedding._

He braces for another freak out, but finds that he can't manage one. Even if it turns out Ronan wants to do something completely horrible. Adam will live. Adam is good at living through horrors.

 _Optimistic resignation_ is not the most appropriate feeling to have toward one's upcoming wedding, maybe, but he'll take it.

He waits to bring it up until they're in bed for the night. Adam is trying and failing to read a book while Ronan idly runs his fingers over the ring ("Oh God," Adam had said the night of the engagement, "you're going to be _even weirder_ about my hands now, aren't you -- "), and he gives up on finishing the page he's on, and sets his book down on the nightstand.

"Can we have a kind of awkward conversation?" Adam asks.

"No," Ronan says. "Be super awkward. Don't half-ass it."

"Yeah, sorry if I'm not stupid enough about this. Let me know if I have to go get Gansey to make this weirder than it already is."

Ronan blows in his ear.

Adam elbows him.

This somehow ends with Adam in a headlock.

Ronan would let Adam go if he asked, but that's as good as admitting he lost. He keeps a level tone when he asks, "What were you thinking for the wedding ceremony?" like they're normal people having a normal conversation in normal posture, possibly over tea.

Ronan tightens his grip, so there goes Adam's hope of wriggling out while he's distracted. "Nice try."

Adam sighs and taps out, and Ronan lets him go, looking insufferably smug. It's one more example of how unfair life is, that Ronan looks so attractive when he's smug.

"Seriously, though," Adam says, because the alternative is making out with Ronan and Ronan gets too much positive reinforcement for bad behavior as it is. "I'd be fine with just going to the courthouse, but I feel like you have other ideas."

"I don't have _ideas_ ," Ronan mutters, which means that he absolutely has ideas and he cares about them deeply. "Just thoughts."

"I'm curious what you think the difference is."

"We don't have to do something if it's just a _thought_ ," and okay, that makes a weird amount of sense. It also makes Adam wish, not for the first time in their relationship, that Ronan were half as selfish as he is.

"We don't _have_ to do anything," Adam points out, "except get a license at some point. I think they cost about fifty bucks. We could split it."

Ronan rolls his eyes. "It's all the same money after we get married."

"Well, no, Virginia's not a common property state." A bit of dark humor stabs through Adam. "Maybe you should get a prenup anyway."

Ronan looks like he's considering putting Adam back in a headlock. "You're being stupid enough about this now."

"There's a lot of that going around," Adam says. "Look, we could go to the courthouse _tomorrow_ if you don't care about doing anything special, but that's not going to make Declan look bad. We should do -- something else, I don't know." He gestures vaguely. "If you want to get married in a church -- "

A sharp unhappy look crosses over Ronan's face.

Adam's one consolation is that Ronan does not try to hide it from him, but that's a hell of a consolation for the way his heart seizes up. _That_ is what Ronan wants, and Adam thought he was being coy, and damn the Catholic Church and the Irish and damn Niall Lynch in particular, which is a traitorous little thought that Adam has had before that he is _taking to his fucking grave_.

Ronan's voice is low when he says, "they wouldn't let us."

"Not at St. Agnes," Adam agrees slowly, because there's no getting around that. "We can find a Protestant church -- 

Ronan scowls at him. Fair enough. Adam should have known there would be no compromises for Ronan Lynch.

Adam kisses Ronan's arm, right below the hem of his sleeve, and pushes the sleeve up to place another kiss on Ronan's shoulder. An apology, and a promise, and whatever else Ronan needs right now.

"We'll figure something else out. We've got a year and a half. At least."

"What do you mean _at least_. You said after graduation."

"Which encompasses the span of time starting in a year and a half and going through the rest of our lives."

"You're not pulling any long engagement bullshit." Okay, Ronan has an opinion about _lengths of engagements_ , which is unexpected and sweet and more than a little disturbing.

"Fine," Adam says, "next summer, then. I was just pointing out we could push it back further if you wanted to do something hideously complicated."

"I can plan a hideously complicated wedding in a year and a half," and Adam has the sudden realization that he has issued a challenge without meaning to and with no way to take it back.

But before he can panic, Ronan looks at him -- briefly, from the corner of his eye -- and looks away.

"Unless you don't want that."

He doesn't want it for himself, but it's abundantly clear that Ronan cares about this more than he does and Adam will happily do whatever Ronan wants.

It's on the tip of his tongue to say that, to say _this is more important to you than it is to me_. But as much as he's already screwed up, he's not that stupid. He takes a second to find the real, true part of what he's feeling, the part that won't kick Ronan when he's down or make him try to take the damn ring back _again_.

"You've thought about this more than I have," Adam says carefully. "We'll do whatever you come up with."

"Really." Ronan sounds excited, like someone handed him the keys to a race car on an empty stretch of highway.

It occurs to Adam that he is hitching his fate to the weirdest guy he knows, but that was a decision made years ago and he's not going to change it now. If Ronan _wants_ to plan a wedding, who is Adam to take that away from him?

"Within reason, Ronan."

"I'm always fucking reasonable."

-

The very next morning Gansey is sitting at the breakfast table flipping through a wedding magazine. Where did he get a wedding magazine? _Only God knows_. Adam's pretty sure Gansey hasn't left the Barns since he arrived. Did he find it in the Barns? Did he sneak out in the dead of night and steal it from the convenience store in town? _Did he already have it with him?_ All the possibilities are equally plausible and equally terrifying.

"...though really, when you go looking for advice on planning a wedding, most of it is bride-focused," Gansey is explaining. "Which isn't helpful."

"It's for the best." Blue is drinking her coffee out of a wine glass, for reasons that Adam probably doesn't want to know. "You don't want anything to do with the wedding industrial complex, anyway."

"But I was going to make you wear a fuck-ugly gown. Don't take that away from me, Sargent." Ronan is drinking his coffee out of a _cereal bowl_ , and Adam definitely does not want to know. Some days it feels like all of the magic and resurrections and prophecies are the _normal_ part of his life.

"Too bad. Adam called dibs. I'm his best man, assuming you ever figure out what you're doing."

"Adam says we're doing whatever I want, so you better be nice to me."

Adam decides that's enough eavesdropping. This is only going to get worse in his absence.

"That's not what I said." It's exactly what he said, but it's also a lot to face up to in the light of day. Maybe coffee will help.

Except that every mug they own is soaking in the sink. Ronan and Blue are wearing identical fake-innocent expressions.

Adam looks at Gansey for backup, but Gansey is inspecting a double-page spread of some rustic-twinkle-lights-and-barn-house affair, because all of Adam's loved ones are useless.

Adam extracts a single mug and washes it thoroughly before pouring himself some coffee.

Ronan brushes his lips against Adam's ear, a silent _good morning_. Adam shakes his head and washes a mug for Ronan, too, and swaps it out for the cereal bowl.

"We've been brainstorming." Gansey holds up the magazine, as though it were an appropriate thing to confront a person with before breakfast. "We're open to your input."

"My input is _be reasonable_ ," Adam says. "Which by definition excludes your input, Gansey."

Gansey looks hurt, but Blue laughs, and he smiles ruefully. "Sorry. I'm excited, but that doesn't excuse overstepping."

"You're both overstepping," Ronan says. "Adam doesn't get any say in this."

Adam considers this, and the general wisdom of late-night conversations, and how little he wants to plan a wedding in the first place.

"What if Blue gets a say on my behalf?"

Ronan and Blue appraise each other like gunslingers at high noon.

"I guess I wouldn't die," Ronan concedes. Blue cracks her knuckles.

"I feel like Adam needs a voice in all this," Gansey says.

"I'm his voice," Blue says.

"And you'll be a wonderful advocate -- " Gansey starts.

"If you don't go mad with power," Adam says.

"Or just mad," Ronan says.

" -- but maybe Adam would like to establish some ground rules." Gansey finishes, and looks at Adam expectantly.

The trouble is, Adam _doesn't_. Not that he doesn't see the point Gansey is making. But he doesn't _know_ what he wants, doesn't even know what exists in the realm of possibilities, and he hates that ignorant useless feeling of having no knowledge about a subject.

What do people have a weddings, besides all of the twinkly-lights-wedding-industrial-complex nightmares that Blue will surely veto, and all of the religious trappings that they wouldn't be allowed in the first place? Adam hasn't been to a wedding since he was seven, since before his parents fell out with the rest of the family. Everything he dimly remembers about his distant cousin's wedding is like something from another world. He might as well ask that their wedding not take place on the moon.

But he has to say something, before too many _whatever you want_ s start to sound like _I don't care_ , because even if that's right it's also very, very wrong.

"Just -- something small," Adam says pathetically. That shouldn't be too hard; they have three family members between the two of them. "And nothing too sappy," and that triggers a thought. "Okay, I know, none of that -- 'love is patient, love is kind,' I veto that."

Blue chokes on her coffee and starts coughing, loudly. "Can you imagine?" she wheezes. "Like -- 'love is patient, love is kind,' and they're glaring at each other -- "

"I'm revoking your best man status," Adam tells her.

"I think it's perfect," Ronan says, and starts counting on his fingers as he recites, because Adam is marrying a goddamn troll. "Doesn't boast, not easily angered, keeps no record of wrongs -- "

"I will make you regret this."

Blue coughs and laughs and somehow finds the air to say, "please, _please_ read that at your wedding, this is amazing."

"Okay," Gansey says, lifting Blue to her feet, "let's get you some fresh air." Blue lets him steer her outside.

Adam glares at Ronan, but Ronan is so amused that Adam has to look away before he smiles in return. "Do you want the damn Corinthians in the wedding or are you just fucking with me?"

Ronan shrugs. "I'm a complicated guy. Maybe it's both."

"Right."

Ronan sets down his coffee mug and presses himself against Adam's side, nuzzling Adam's neck.

Adam holds himself rigid for a second, but this is a stupid thing to argue about even by the standards of _things Adam and Ronan fight about_ , so he relaxes into Ronan and places a hand against the small of Ronan's back.

"Love does not delight in evil," Ronan recites softly, "but rejoices with the truth."

"You're not winning me over," Adam warns him. "Or, you are, but the Corinthians can go fuck themselves."

"Fine, no Corinthians," Ronan says. "Any other ground rules?"

"Not really? I just want to be married," and Adam is surprised with the force that hits him with, how much he means it.

Ronan huffs, and Adam suppresses a shiver at the feel of Ronan's breath across his skin. "I'm going to plan something and you can't complain about it."

"Can we agree that no more than thirty percent of the wedding is a deliberate attempt to annoy me?"

"Forty percent."

Ronan can't see him, so Adam smiles. "Fine."

-

"I've hidden your magazine," Adam tells Gansey. "You can have it back when you leave."

Gansey sits across from Adam, setting a book on the table, where it looks feeble and lonely next to the stack of books Adam brought home from school. "I'm surprised you didn't destroy it."

"Too much work," Adam says, flipping a page.

Gansey opens his own book, for all the world like he's planning on sitting there in silence and letting Adam study in peace.

But his eyes don't move across the page. Adam doesn't let himself get invested in reading, just waits for Gansey to say whatever it is he's is here to say.

He's expecting a _don't break his heart_ conversation. They've had a few of those over the years, which have ranged from infuriating to sweet to deeply infuriating. He has no idea how he'll react to one now. It might be a relief if Gansey _does_ warn him about treating Ronan right; it'd be something familiar, at least.

But instead Gansey says, "I'm happy for you."

"Yes, I heard," Adam says dryly. "I was planning on eating that scone."

"But I want to know that you're happy for you, too."

Adam looks up. Gansey has abandoned any pretense of reading. His eyes are bright and intense behind his glasses, and Adam feels a shiver run down his back.

Sometimes, when Gansey is particularly annoying or ridiculous, Adam loses sight of this. Of who Gansey really is, underneath the salmon polo shirts and the mint leaves and the curated collection of eccentric hobbies.

Some truths are too big to live with every moment of every day; but that does not make it any less true, that Gansey is a leader that Adam would follow -- has followed -- to the ends of the earth and back.

"I am," Adam says.

Gansey smiles, and it eases something in Adam's heart that he hadn't noticed was pained. "I'm glad." He looks down at his book, but Adam can't possibly focus on reading, keeps staring across the table. So he's watching Gansey when Gansey looks back up at him. "It feels like a long time ago that you were asking me how I knew I was in love."

"Yeah," Adam manages.

"I'm glad you figured it out."

"I didn't, though." Gansey's face betrays no shock or disappointment, just acceptance, and Adam has a fierce and unexpected desire to tell Gansey everything, every last secret thought and private doubt and all of the hidden things that make up _Adam Parrish_. "I still don't understand it. It doesn't make any sense to me. But -- " he stops for so long that he figures Gansey will have to butt in and finish his thought for him. Maybe he's hoping for it.

But Gansey just waits, and listens, and eventually Adam hears himself say, "Maybe it doesn't have to."

Gansey nods at him, a benediction Adam hadn't admitted to wanting, and then he actually reads his book while Adam struggles to make the page come into focus. Jackass.

-

After that, Adam kind of -- forgets he's engaged, to be honest.

Or, first there's a week of bombardment when he returns to school, questions and congratulations and more than one person who shares Declan's skepticism about youthful engagements. Adam practices his politest _fuck off and die_ smile for those instances, which is a lot easier than accepting the sincere well-wishes with grace.

But once it stops being news, and he's gotten used to the presence of the ring on his finger, and Ronan turns out to mean what he said about keeping Adam out of the wedding planning, it's easy to not think about it.

So when he sees a stack of brochures for florists on Ronan's table when he's visiting on a weekend that spring, he assumes Ronan's replacing the rosebushes that died last winter because roses are, in Ronan's words, _weak-ass prissy shit flowers_. He picks up the top brochure, mildly curious what a rosebush costs.

He never does find out. Opal snatches the brochure out of his hand and skitters out of arm's reach.

"Sorry, are those yours?" Adam asks.

"Don't know what you're talking about." Opal shoves the brochure in a pocket. She's wearing a bomber jacket that reaches down to her knees. It had six or seven pockets when she and Blue found it at the thrift store, and Blue had promptly added several more. Things have a way of disappearing into Opal's pockets and not reappearing for months, if at all.

"Then you won't mind if -- " Adam reaches for the table. Opal darts forward, a hair faster than something with her build should be able to move, and grabs the rest of the brochures.

"You saw nothing," she says, and gallops out of the room.

Adam is still shaking his head and smiling at her antics when Ronan walks in.

Ronan shoots him a question.

"Your filly is collecting trinkets again," he explains. "Flowers, apparently. Which is more traditionally feminine than she usually gets, but Blue would kick my ass if I said that was a bad thing."

Ronan glances over at the table, where the brochures were, and takes in that they're missing.

"Or were those yours?" Adam asks. "I don't think you're getting them back without a fight."

"They were just research," Ronan complains. "I'm not going to order anything a year out."

"I thought this was a good time for planting," Adam says.

Ronan gives him a strange look.

Adam returns it, until it hits him over the head what they're _a year out_ from that would require flowers.

"Oh, shit," he says, and then, "was it supposed to be a secret that there are going to be flowers at the wedding? That's -- not very surprising," although it sort of is. As is the idea of Ronan doing _research_ , a year out, and Adam might need to sit down soon.

"The whole thing is a secret. That's the point."

"I thought the point was, you know, love, devotion, blah blah blah."

"Anyone can have love and devotion and shit."

"Good, I'm glad we aren't going to have one of those boring sentimental weddings." Adam nearly lets it go, but seriously, _research_ , and there's a point at which this is too much work for him to shrug out of guilt-free. "Is there anything you need me to do for this?"

"Stop fishing for hints."

"If I wanted to find out what you were up to, I could." Ronan looks stubborn, and Adam already accidentally challenged him into planning a wedding, he shouldn't escalate the situation. "But I won't. So if you want me to do something you have to tell me."

Ronan nods, so blatantly thinking something over that Adam doesn't head out to work on the tractor like he's been planning all morning, just waits for him to spit it out.

It takes a few minutes, and Adam tilting his head in that _get over yourself, Lynch_ way, and then he says, "You should change your name."

He thought he'd have to write some vows or find a caterer. It's hard to imagine how being named Adam interferes with any of Ronan's plans. Adam is a great name. It might be the one thing his parents got right.

So it's in honest confusion that he asks "To what?"

Ronan stares him down. "To _Lynch_ ," like it's obvious, like it makes any kind of sense. Which it doesn't, not for an eternity, and by the time it clicks together Ronan's already sneering to cover hurt feelings.

Adam hates that sneer, and he hates being made to look like an idiot, and he hates the lightning bolt of fear that runs through him when he finally understands what the hell Ronan is talking about.

"You want me to _take your name_?"

Ronan flares his nostrils, and great, now he's offended. Like Adam is the one who's out of line.

"We're getting married."

"I know that. I didn't know we were getting married in the fifties."

"It's a good name," Ronan says. "It's better than Parrish."

"It's _my name_ ," Adam argues. "I can't just _change my name_."

"You could if you wanted to."

Adam shuts his eyes. Sure, it's _possible_. Never mind that it would screw with the networking he's done, and cost who knows how much time and money. Never mind that it would take away _his name_ , the one thing he's ever really owned.

"You don't -- " Adam starts, and then bites his tongue. Because this isn't an issue that can get dragged down into technicalities and possibilities. This isn't going to be won by Adam talking about the damage to his professional reputation, or Ronan talking about -- whatever the _fuck_ inspired this in the first place.

This isn't going to be _won_ by anybody.

"It's -- it's too much."

He expects Ronan to argue with him. To say, _it's not that much_. To say, _it's one thing, I'm planning a whole wedding and you can't do one fucking thing --_

Ronan is good at arguing. Ronan doesn't tie himself into knots over what he ought to think or say, doesn't trip up leaving loopholes and escape routes, just sets eyes on his target and pushes his way through to it.

But Ronan has never been half as selfish as Adam.

"It was just an idea," Ronan says.

Once, a fight like this would have meant _days_ of hurt feelings, silent treatment, chilly condescension and anxious looks. But they both know each other better than they did when they were kids. They know themselves better. They've grown up and into each other, which Adam usually thinks of as a good thing.

Now, though, it hurts, how much this shouldn't be okay.

He steps up and into Ronan's space, settles his hands on Ronan's back and forces himself to relax when Ronan wraps his arms around his shoulders. 

"We're getting married," Adam says, because that's another thing that would have happened in the old days, _we had a fight so now it's over_. He doesn't think Ronan would fall into that trap, but Ronan has always been a black-and-white thinker, all or nothing, together or alone. "That's the important part. The name doesn't mean anything. It doesn't matter."

"Right." Ronan sounds like he means it. Like he isn't thinking _if it doesn't matter then why can't you change it_ , which makes one of them. He just breathes deeply and runs his hands slowly down Adam's back. "I gotta go get my shit back from the brat."

"Be careful."

Ronan sounds more like himself when he says, "Whatever, I'm going to hang her up by her ankles and shake her 'til stuff falls out of her pockets. She'll be fine."

"Yeah, I'm more worried she'll bite off one of your fingers."

Ronan kisses him on the ear, awkward, and goes off to harass Opal.

It takes Adam twice as long as it should to fix the tractor.

-

"Adam." He was prepared for surprise, but Blue has leapfrogged right over _surprise_ and straight to _suspicion_. "You're here."

"I know that. Came I come in?"

She swings the door open without hesitation, but watches Adam like a hawk as he pulls his shoes off and hangs up his jacket.

"I'm not going to steal anything, you know."

" _Why_ are you here?" she asks as though he hadn't spoken.

"I can't just swing by for a visit?"

"Yes," Blue says, "but you never do."

Fine, Adam can play the dirty look game too. He stares and Blue stares and one or both of them is in serious danger of getting their face stuck like this for all eternity when Gansey steps out of the kitchen, apron-clad and spattered with flour.

"Adam!" and that, Blue, is how you greet a beloved friend who stops by for an unexpected visit. Well, maybe not the exuberant fist bump that leaves egg wash on your friend's knuckles, but the grin and the enthusiasm and the complete lack of probing questions, that's spot on. "You're just in time for dinner."

"I already ate," Adam lies.

Blue snorts and mutters "coward" for Adam's ears only. As though anyone with sense or tastebuds would not excuse themselves from Gansey's cooking.

They get settled at the table with two plates of eggplant parmigiana and three glasses of wine, which Gansey decants and lets breathe, because Gansey is not a real college kid and possibly not a real human being.

Blue keeps watching Adam, and her suspicion grates on him. Sure, he's acting odd, but not _that_ odd, and if Blue of all people can't trust him then no one can. Maybe he interrupted something; that would account for Blue's bad mood. Though Gansey is chatting about his upcoming summer excavation without a sign of impatience or inconvenience.

"So, Adam," Blue says, when he's down half a glass of red. That's probably intentional on her part. Adam has low tolerance born of rarely drinking, and his head already feels fuzzy. "What brings you to our home? I thought you were at the Barns this weekend."

"I was." Adam puts his glass down. "I thought I'd stop by on the way back to school."

Blue raises an eyebrow at him, but she can't challenge him outright when Gansey replies so effusively, "And you're always welcome here!"

" _Thank_ you." Adam shoots Blue a victorious look.

Gansey frowns, suddenly pensive. "But wouldn't you have driven past school to get to us?"

Blue snorts a laugh. Adam kicks at her foot under the table, but her legs are too short for him to reach. He'll take great satisfaction in pointing that out to her the next time she crosses him.

"'On the way' is a figure of speech."

"I get all those figures of speech confused," Blue asks, not sounding half as innocent as she thinks. "Which one means 'driving two hundred miles out of your way,' is that a simile?"

"Metaphor, probably," Gansey answers absently. "Well, we're happy to see you. Stay the night, if you have to." He tops up Adam's glass.

Adam carries around a mental picture of his calendar, visible every time he shuts his eyes or stares into space in exhaustion. He knows he has an eight a.m. ethics discussion tomorrow the same way he knows he has ten fingers.

But he can't see his calendar. He can't see Gansey or Blue. He can't see anything but the disappointed look on Ronan's face.

"Sure." Adam picks up the wine glass again, raises it in a toast to Gansey's hospitality. "That'd be great."

"Okay, seriously," Blue hisses at Adam, when the meal is over and Gansey is in the kitchen washing dishes.

Adam has had one and a half glasses of wine on an empty stomach, so he's pretty much shit-faced, and more than a little afraid he'll say something he shouldn't.

He tries to duck into the kitchen to help Gansey with clean up, but Blue outmaneuvers him. Which isn't hard to do; the couch could outmaneuver him at this point. He decides to quit while he's ahead and collapses down to a seat.

"You're starting to freak me out. You never stay the night."

"'S late," Adam says. "Wouldn't get back to school 'til the middle of the night."

"That's never stopped you before. You always make a big fuss about school or work or both, and then Gansey stays up for hours worrying you won't make it back safely and thinking up ways to make you stay the night. You know he bought a guest bed? In case the problem was that you didn't like the couch. And then he thought you'd hate him spending all that money so he returned it and bought a futon."

Adam wonders if maybe he isn't drunker than he realized, because that is _madness_. "Your true love is creepy."

"Tell me something I don't know," Blue sighs. "Like why you drove two hundred miles to get drunk on a school night and cockblock me."

So he had interrupted something. He'd feel vindication about being right, except Blue looks genuinely worried about him.

"Do you think you're going to marry Gansey?" he blurts out.

Blue sounds about fifty percent amused. "I never figured you for one of those people." She's smiling, but that does nothing to stop the instinctual raise of hackles that Adam feels at the phrase _those people_. "You're getting married and now you think everyone else has to. I swear, if you chuck a bouquet at me -- "

"It was just a question," Adam snarls, and there goes all of the amusement on Blue's face. "Do whatever you want, I don't give a shit if you ever get married."

"Adam," Blue says softly, and then, "I'm sorry."

Adam looks away with a jolt. He can't stand an apology, not when he's in the wrong and knows it. Not from Blue, who never apologizes when she doesn't mean it. He shouldn't have had that wine, shouldn't have given in to the desire for company, shouldn't have made anyone else in his life unhappy because he's too broken to give them what they want.

"Don't," he starts, with no idea how he'll finish it.

Blue takes his wine glass out of his hand and drains it.

The glass makes a tiny _plink_ noise as she sets it on the glass top table.

"I think we will at some point. Get married." She bites her lip, looking intently down the hallway on her left, not at Adam, not back toward the kitchen at Gansey. "He would in a heart beat, but we're so young, you know? I don't see the rush."

It's easier to talk to Blue's ear than it is to own up to every mistake he's made in the last twelve hours. "You think you'll keep your name when you get married?"

Blue turns back to him, her eyes wide in an almost comic surprise.

"I always figured I would. I like the idea of a matriarchal line of Sargent women." She rubs her jaw with one hand. "Plus it'd be weird if I call him Gansey and that's my name, too."

There's one point. Adam wonders what Ronan thinks he's going to call him when he's pretending not to like him, if his name isn't Parrish anymore. He wouldn't say _Lynch_ , would he?

He doesn't have an answer to that. He doesn't have an answer to anything.

And hell, if anyone can make sense out of his messed up life, it's Blue. His first love, his best man, his lifeline when he nearly lost himself to his own mind.

"Ronan wants me to take his name." It's such a heavy admission that he doesn't know he'll get it out until he's said it.

Blue snorts. "Yeah, he would."

"What? Why do you say that?"

"Because I've met him?" Blue says drily. "If he could get away with hiring someone to follow you around with a sign that said 'property of Ronan Lynch,' he'd do it. Of course he wants you to take his name."

"I'm not his property."

" _I_ know that. He knows it too, but he'll settle for staking his claim as obnoxiously as he can."

Adam doesn't get a chance to answer that, which is for the best, because he does want to keep Blue as a friend and anything he could have said just then would have made that an unlikely proposition.

That doesn't mean he feels charitable toward Gansey for entering, sitting on the couch next to Blue and greeting her with a kiss like he's been gone off in the wars instead of washing dishes. "What are we talking about?"

He _definitely_ doesn't feel charitable toward Blue for saying, matter of fact, "Adam's going to change his name when he gets married."

Gansey's joy is so immediate and so complete that it feels like a rebuke: _why can't you ever be happy, Adam; why do you have to think everything to death._

"No, I'm not," Adam says, brutal.

It's like kicking a puppy, the way Gansey deflates. Adam always does strike back too hard, misplaced protective instincts kicking in years too late to do any good.

He stands up. Rubs a hand across his face so he doesn't have to make eye contact with anyone. "I should go."

"Adam, sit back down and stop being dramatic," Blue says. It's blunt but not unkind. Adam's legs bend without him telling them to, though he ends up perched on the very edge of the couch, ready to run. "You're overthinking things again, aren't you."

"No," Adam says, because he's allowed to lie to Blue. It's not like she's going to buy it. "I just don't see how he could _ask_ me something like that."

"He didn't mean to upset you," Gansey says, and Adam knew that already. Ronan has blunter instruments in his arsenal when he's trying to piss Adam off; he doesn't play mind games like this. "Just -- you know how much Ronan cares about family. It's important to him. He probably thinks it's romantic."

"Why can't he change his name, then."

Adam knows it's stupid even as he's saying it, even before Blue and Gansey's skeptical looks. Ronan is _Lynch_ through and through; a good old Irish name for the son of an immigrant raised on Old Country pastimes like Catholic guilt and alcohol abuse.

But that stings again, that Ronan's identity is more important, superior, untouchable.

"That's not the same," Gansey says. "He's got his brothers, and, you know, he misses his parents. It's not like you."

"What's _that_ supposed to mean?"

"Come on, you were miserable as a Parrish -- "

"Well, it was my misery!"

There's a long silence. Adam gives in to the temptation to bury his face in his hands. He can tell that Blue and Gansey are having some kind of communication, but they do him the courtesy of doing it silently, so he doesn't protest.

Blue rests a hand on his back and tells him, "You don't have to choose between being right and being happy, you know."

"Who says I get to do either?"

"I do," she says, and Adam has seen that ferocity of hers move mountains and raise the dead.

Gansey gets up from the couch and sits on his other side. There only a few inches between Adam and the arm of the couch; Gansey ends up squishing Adam up against Blue, who wraps an arm around his waist and pulls him against her until her bony little chin is digging into his shoulder.

"This is really uncomfortable," Adam says.

"Deal with it," Blue replies. "You came to us, now you have to put up with the fact that we love you."

"Ugh. Fine."

Gansey shifts, putting his legs half on top of Adam's, and that's strange even for their tactile friend group. Adam nudges Blue until she moves half a couch cushion down, dragging him behind her, and Gansey sighs with relief. They're taking up about two thirds of the couch now, instead of half, and if that isn't much for three full-grown adults -- or, well, two full-grown adults and Blue -- it is enough that Adam can breathe. Breathe deeply, even, and settle his head against Blue's shoulder while Gansey's head comes to rest on his arm.

It's not as uncomfortable as he'd claim, if anyone asked.

No one does ask. No one pushes him for explanations. No one demands anything from him except to sit and be comforted, which is how he knows that the questioning little voice in his head is all him.

"I just wish I could do what he wanted."

A hand comes down to pet his head.

"You already do," Gansey says.

Adam never does get to see the new guest futon, because he falls asleep like that, tangled up between his friends.

-

Adam keeps waiting for Ronan to bring up the name thing again, especially once he comes back to Virginia for the summer. He has plenty of opportunities for it; they see each other every day, which is a decadence Adam shouldn't allow himself. There's a dozen opportunities he's missing in New York, not to mention ten straight weeks of no income. But he _needs_ this time, thinks Ronan needs to it, and his boss and his college adviser and his supervisor at his internship had all nodded approvingly when he mentioned _taking a break_.

It leaves something to be desired as a break, though, when anytime someone addresses him as _Parrish,_ or he sees his name on a piece of paperwork, or he walks into a room and Ronan stops whatever he's doing -- the telltale sign that he is working on wedding planning -- every time, Adam twitches and waits for Ronan to bring it up again, for Ronan to ask him to change his name.

But that's the thing about Ronan and his black-and-white thinking. Adam said _no_ , so it isn't going to happen.

After months of being so used to the ring he hardly noticed it, Adam finds it catching his attention several times an hour: the stones snag the denim of his jeans when he reaches into his pocket, the metal clanks against tools, the light shine off it at weird angles until it almost seems to glow. He's starting to wonder if it doesn't do something dream-like after all.

He's maybe getting a little wrapped up in his own head.

"Want to go for a drive?" he asks Opal.

Opal peers down at him from in the highest branch of the climbing tree, the product of several long weeks of her failed efforts and the bitter realization that no matter how hard she tried, hooves were not cut out for arboreal ascent. Adam had designed the tree with its little footholds, and Ronan had crafted it, and Chainsaw did her part by occasionally deigning to sit on a branch and comb Opal's hair with her beak.

"Kerah?" she asks.

"You and me."

She nods and jumps out of the tree without warning, or without any warning other than the fact that she is a Lynch and recklessness is in her blood -- so Adam's ready to catch her before she's airborne.

They drive into town in companionable silence. Adam dashes into the ice cream parlor with the engine running, Opal tapping on the dashboard in time to the radio, and orders pistachio ice cream and a cone full of sprinkles. He orders it like this is a reasonable thing to ask for. Most of the restaurants in Henrietta are used to Adam and Ronan placing weird orders and just roll with it, at this point.

"Can I drive?" Opal asks, as he hands both cones to her.

"No driving my car until you can reach the pedals."

"Kerah lets me drive."

"I don't know why you think that would convince me," Adam says. Opal doesn't answer, just holds her ice cream cone aloft and tilts it until a thin stream of sprinkles falls into her mouth like a rainbow waterfall.

They drive back out of town, not to the Barns or Cabeswater but to some of the wilderness Gansey had dragged him through in the early days of their friendship. Before Adam knew there was magic or anything else beautiful in the world.

He eats his ice cream and follows Opal as she runs through the trees, ahead of him but never out of sight.

She circles back to him when he stops at the slow-moving creek, kneeling to wash the stickiness of ice cream off his hands.

"We should talk about some stuff," Adam says. He's resting on his heels by the water, which puts their eyes close to level.

"Talking's scary." Yeah, Opal came from Ronan's head, all right.

"I know."

"Are you going to be brave or am I?"

"You're a lot braver than I am," Adam says. "Let me have this one."

She tilts her head, an invitation to begin.

"Ronan and I are getting married."

"Yes." She doesn't point out that she knows this already, or ask what he's getting at.

"Things are going to change."

"Like what?"

"I don't know," Adam says. "I haven't got it all figured out yet. I spent too much time pretending nothing would change."

"That's not very realistic."

"No, it's not. I'm trying to do better."

Opal lifts her wrist to her lips. The gesture twists at Adam's heart, because it's _Ronan's_ gesture, minus the leather bands. He wonders if Ronan ever feels like this, catches her doing things she learned from him. "Are you going to live here after you get married?"

"I might have to live somewhere else sometimes," Adam admits. "It depends what job I get after I graduate."

"I want you to live here."

"I want that too. I'm going to be here as much as I can."

"Kerah's here." Like Adam needs any convincing. Like that is the only thing that could convince him.

"So are you," Adam says. "And so are Matthew and Declan, sometimes. My whole family." He almost stops there, but dammit, he said he was going to be the brave one, so he tries it out: "All of the Lynches."

"I'm not a Lynch," Opal points out.

"Well, I'm not either. But you count if you want to."

Opal stares at the creek. "I think they need us. They're a mess."

Adam snorts, because Opal did not get her flair for understatement from Ronan. "No kidding." But he sobers up, feels a heavy pressure on his heart. "You don't have to look out for Ronan, you know. It's not the kid's job to look out for the dad."

"Ronan's not my dad. Neither are you." She inhales suddenly, and Adam waits, anxious, for whatever's going to follow. But it's only, "I don't like fathers."

"Yeah, me neither."

"But if I did," she continues, and takes his hand.

Adam squeezes her hand. She's got dirt under her nails, ground into her palms. The air around them is hot and muggy and full of mosquitos. There's sweat trickling down his back and into his eyes. Adam is so happy that he might actually break.

"This doesn't mean I'm going to tell you anything about the wedding," Opal says, dead serious.

"I'm not trying to find out anything about the wedding."

She looks at him in utter disbelief.

"I'm not," Adam says again. "Ronan is paranoid."

Opal stands mute. 

"And if I were," he continues, because this is getting ridiculous. "I could find out on my own. I wouldn't need to bribe you."

Opal shakes her head once.

"I'm going to hate this wedding, aren't I?"

Opal says, "our family is weird," which is probably the answer Adam was looking for.

"Come on," he says, letting go of her hand. "I'll toss you in the creek if you want."

-

The great thing about being Adam Parrish is that he always has some work to distract him. Lectures and essays and work study and internship and pre-professional society mixers; Adam throws himself into all of them when school starts again in August, stays too busy to worry about whether he's screwed up his marriage before the wedding even happens.

The terrible thing about being Adam Parrish is he is never too busy too worry.

But he's trying, anyway, so it's a shock and not entirely welcome when he answers the phone at his intership and his crisp professional "You've reached the office of the mayor," is met with "Oh, man, Adam, is that you?"

Adam doesn't drop the phone, but it's close. "Matthew?"

"It is you! Cool. I couldn't remember where you worked, this is like the fifth place I called. Did you know the Governor doesn't live in New York City?"

"Yes, I knew that." Adam looks around, but no one is paying any attention to the intern. "Have you just been calling politicians in New York and asking for me?"

"It's been fun," Matthew cheerfully dismisses Adam's secondhand embarrassment. "The guys at the station all think it's hilarious. But I told you I'd get through eventually!" Matthew's voice goes distant.

Adam pushes a finger against his thumbnail at the word _station_.

"Matthew, did you get arrested?"

He laughs. "No! I don't think. I'm not under arrest, am I?" Another conversation Adam can't make out, while he drums his fingers on his desk and does not panic. "Nope, they brought us in because we had to file a report and also because they said we were cluttering up the side of the road and needed to stop loitering. And of course none of us had our phones, or our wallets, so -- "

Adam breathes once, very deeply. "Did you get robbed?"

"Yes," Matthew says, sounding as though he's _slightly glum_ about being robbed. "And they got the car. My beautiful car, Adam! They took her!"

Adam would point out that Matthew's priorities are out of whack, but Ronan would feel the exact same way in Matthew's position. Though Ronan would be swearing a lot more. "If someone stole your wallet, you need to call and cancel your credit cards."

"Hey, that's a good idea," Matthew says, sounding chipper again. "I'll do that."

"Wait! Don't hang up," Adam says, and Matthew _hm_ s a question. "Where _are_ you?"

"Oh! Right. What's this place called again?" Matthew asks whoever's in the room with him, presumably a police officer. Adam wonders if the cops tested him for drugs or alcohol before letting him make this phone call. _He_ knows that this is just how Matthew is, but it's probably confusing for strangers.

Matthew comes back a second later with the name of a town that Adam has to Google. It's some tiny little hamlet in -- 

"How did you get robbed in Connecticut?" Adam asks, exasperated.

"Funny story." Adam has heard a lot of Matthew's _funny stories_ ; they tend to go on for rather a long time and not so much conclude as trail off into something else.

"You can tell me when I get there."

"Great! He's going to come get us," Matthew says, distant again. "I _told_ you, my brother's in New York, you don't have to sell your body for a train ticket."

"Don't do anything until I get there," Adam says around the sudden lump in his throat. "Just cancel your credit cards and try not to get arrested."

"I'll do my best!" Not that Adam expects him to commit a crime inside a police station intentionally -- that would be Ronan's idea of fun -- but things have a way of _happening_ around Matthew. Witness: getting robbed in Connecticut. Which begs the question of why Matthew was in Connecticut with unknown associates on a school day in the first place. Undoubtedly that is part of the _funny story_.

Adam shuts down his computer and grabs his things, all fluid motion until he's at the door of his supervisor's office. Then he hesitates, uneasy at asking for special treatment, wary of a dressing down.

But he hears Matthew say _my brother's in New York_ , and he's knocking before he can think about it.

"Enter," and Adam pulls the door open and steps into the office.

"I need to leave early," he says, and his supervisor looks up so fast that Adam blushes and doesn't apologize for himself. "Family emergency."

But apparently the look on his supervisor's face is surprise, not anger, because he's already waving Adam off. "Go, go, take care of your family. Take tomorrow off if you need it."

It's on the tip of Adam's tongue to say, _no, of course I'll be in tomorrow_ , to do anything he can to not look lazy or ungrateful or useless.

But he steels himself and says instead, "Thank you. I'll see you on Monday."

He spends pretty much the whole drive to Connecticut second-guessing himself. So much from learning from Ronan's black-and-white thinking.

The less said about Connecticut police stations or Matthew's obnoxious friends, the better. That none of them did manage to get themselves arrested while Adam was sitting in traffic is the highlight of the afternoon. Adam drives them back to their campus and drops them off, ignoring their loud and exuberant conversation as best as he can. It's hard to think that they're only a year or two younger than he is; they are _children_. But that's a good thing, that Matthew and his friends haven't been aged before their time.

Still, it's nice to get them out of his car.

He idles in front of a dorm building, ignoring Matthew's directions.

"You cool?" Matthew asks.

"I'm fine," Adam answers. "Just thinking. You want to skip class tomorrow and drive out to the Barns tonight?"

"Hell yeah!" Matthew pounds on Adam's shoulder so enthusiastically that Adam can't help but grin back at him. "You had me at _skip class_."

Adam shakes his head, but he's smiling. "Your brother is a bad influence on you."

"Yeah, pretty much," Matthew says, happy-go-lucky. "And on you, too! Since when do you skip? Don't you have work tomorrow?"

"Supervisor gave me the day off," Adam says, ignoring the fact that he has two classes tomorrow. "My kid brother got arrested."

"I didn't get _arrested,_ " Matthew whines, but he doesn't argue when Adam takes them to a drive through and claims that _jailbird pays for the burgers_.

-

It's nearly three o'clock in the morning when Adam parks in front of the Barns. He's wired and nauseous and jittery, for reasons that can only partially be ascribed to the energy drink Matthew talked him into chugging at a gas station at midnight -- Matthew had drunk two and still managed to fall asleep in the passenger seat, because Matthew apparently has a burgeoning caffeine abuse problem that Adam should do something about.

That'll have to wait for tomorrow, though. For tonight, he pokes Matthew until he's awake enough to totter into the house on his own.

Adam spends a minute longer than is necessary locking the front door behind him and checking all of the lights are out.

But he's avoiding, and he knows he's avoiding, and he's only going to get more nervous the longer he avoids, so he heads for Ronan's room and opens the door.

In his head, it's a sweet, romantic: surprising his beloved with an unexpected visit, crawling into bed next to him, maybe some lazy makeouts and then sleeping in tomorrow morning.

Instead, he closes the door behind him and is greeted with a loud _crash_. He startles, bangs his elbow against the door and swears at the flare of pain that causes.

Ronan swears back at him, "Jesus," and then a second later, " _Adam?_ "

"Yes, it's me, chill the fuck out." Adam flicks on the light. Ronan is sitting on the edge of the bed, blinking at him. The bedside table is overturned. "What the hell did you do?"

"I was getting up to murder the fucking house invader that snuck into my room." Ronan scrubs at his sleep-clogged eyes. "Shit. What are you doing here?"

There's an explanation that is true and logical and reasonable. He needs to tell Ronan about Matthew's misadventure at some point, let him know that Matthew's home and needs vehicle-based grief counseling.

But instead he says "I wanted to see you."

Ronan drops his hands and looks at Adam intensely. "What's wrong?"

Adam licks his lips. This is the moment. He can get it over with now.

God, he's going to be sick.

"I've been thinking. Adam Lynch. That has a pretty good ring to it."

Ronan doesn't react right away. Adam has plenty of time to worry that he's changed his mind, that he's so sick of Adam's indecisiveness he's going to call the whole thing off.

And then he smirks.

"I thought you hated rings."

"Would you _get over yourself_ and let me _do_ this?"

"Wow," Ronan says, his smile growing by the second. "And I thought the proposal went badly."

"Thanks for reminding me." Adam's shaky; his nerves haven't got the message that they can stand down yet, or else there's too much anxiety for it to bleed off all at once. "You do shit like this and _I still want to marry you_ , how the hell does that even work?"

"Don't think about it too much," Ronan says, "it might stop working."

"No. It won't."

Ronan watches him for a second. "Are you just going to stand there?"

"Depends. Are you going to murder me if I get in bed with you?"

Ronan rolls his eyes and moves over to make room for Adam.

Adam strips down quickly and flicks the lights back off. The bed is warm already, soft and smells like Ronan, and the tension drains out of him in a rush. He's half asleep by the time his head hits the pillow and Ronan wraps an arm around him.

"You gonna tell me where this came from?" Ronan nuzzles at his shoulder. "Or do you have to hide shit to keep the spark alive in our marriage."

"Yeah, if there's one thing I'm worried about, it's that our life together is going to be _boring_." Adam yawns. "I've been thinking about it for a long time. Belonging, you know?"

"I know," Ronan says. "I wasn't sure you did."

"I didn't get it at first." Ronan's hand comes to rest on his side, rising and falling as he breathes, and for one moment it feels like he doesn't have to say anything, that Ronan will just know.

But both of them have spent too much time counting on the other to just _know_ what they mean, instead of saying it.

"Blue thought you wanted to own me," Adam says.

"She's not wrong," Ronan mutters against his skin.

It's funny, that Adam can laugh about that now.

"I guess I thought that too. Like you wanted to say that I belong to you. But we belong to each other. To the whole family. You and me and Opal and Matthew and even Declan." Even as tired as he is, Adam can tell that he's not being eloquent or poignant or any of the things he could have hoped for from this conversation, but at least he's saying _something_.

"Yeah, duh. What else would I mean?"

Adam shifts, which gets a groan of complaint out of Ronan before he settles back again. "I was afraid you were trying to change me."

"I pull shit out of my dreams and even I know that's impossible."

"Stop sweet talking me," Adam says. "I wasn't -- I don't know. I guess it was also. It felt like you were rubbing my face in the fact that my family sucks."

"They do suck," Ronan says. "I hate them. I want you to have a better family, which I thought was obvious when I _asked you to marry me_."

"I figured it out eventually," Adam says. "And, you know. You didn't really ask."

Ronan sits up slowly. Waits until Adam sits up next to him, propped up against him in bed, before he reaches out in the dark and feels his way down Adam's arm to his hand.

"Adam," he says, fingers touching the ring, and Adam knows that the heat that runs through him at Ronan's touch is all in his mind, but that doesn't make it any less powerful. "Will you marry me and take my name?"

"Yeah," Adam says. "I'd love to."

 

_epilogue_

 

Adam arrives in Henrietta only for Blue to inform him that he is not allowed to return home under any circumstance.

"What?" Maybe he misunderstood. He is groggy and grungy from the drive. Half of his worldly possessions are crammed into the trunk and the backseat and the passenger seat of his car. He wants nothing more in life but to force Ronan to take a nap with him. "Why not?"

"Ronan's getting it ready for tomorrow." Adam must not react to that sufficiently for Blue's tastes. "You're getting married? Does that ring any bells?"

"That's tomorrow?"

"You really checked out of the wedding planning, didn't you?"

"That was Ronan's idea." Adam had said _after graduation_ , and graduation had been a whole week ago. Gansey and Blue and Ronan had all driven out for it, and Ronan had driven back to the Barns with half of Adam's packed up apartment while Adam stayed in New York to finish his last few days of work.

Adam had half-wondered if Ronan wasn't going to abduct him as soon as he'd crossed the stage with his diploma. But apparently he had other plans. Plans which do not include Adam getting to go home.

"I figured you knew the _date_ ," Blue says, disgusted. "Nervous?"

"No," Adam lies.

"Second thoughts?"

"No," Adam tells the truth.

Blue studies him for a moment before nodding, as though deciding something. "Ronan told me to drop a bunch of cryptic hints about tomorrow to freak you out."

"I'm glad that you are the people I trust the most in the world."

"Relax, I'm not going to do Ronan's dirty work for him." Blue rolls her eyes. "Don't freak out, okay? You probably won't die."

"Is it too late to kick you out of the wedding?"

"Yes. Get your stuff, you're crashing at my place."

Adam spends the night at 300 Fox Way with Blue, camped out on the floor of her old room while she stretches out in her bed and comments on how comfortable the mattress is.

Adam thinks about growing up, and family, and places where you will always be able to rest your head, no matter how much time has passed or how much you have changed.

"Still resisting the call of matrimony?" he asks, after Blue makes a pointed remark about the softness of her pillows.

One of said pillows flies out of the darkness to hit Adam in the face. It is not as soft as advertised, at least not when hurled at high velocity. He tucks it under him for additional cushioning.

"Don't think I won't fight you because you're getting married tomorrow. I'm not afraid of your fiancé."

"Yes, you are."

"Please, he's a big cuddly pushover. I thought you of all people would have figured that out by now."

"Yeah, I know." He can hear the smile in his own voice.

"Ugh, this is gross. I'd rather you bother me about my own wedding plans instead of listening to how gross you are when you're in love."

"You should have thought of that before you threw a pillow at me." Adam thinks about making Blue listen to a long sappy monologue about Ronan, but all he manages is, "he's great, you know?"

"He's great, he's wonderful, he's going to be _pissed_ at me if you fall asleep in the middle of the wedding because you were up all night gossiping."

"He doesn't really get pissed at you," Adam says. "He just pretends because he thinks you're funny when you're mad."

"I _know_ ," Blue says. "Seriously, I know all of this, Ronan is a big fluffy teddy bear, you're an idiot, I get it already. I'm glad I never had sleepover as a kid, gossiping about boys instead of sleeping is awful."

Adam doesn't manage to sleep, but he lets Blue drift off, and at some point it's daylight. Maura and Calla serve them breakfast in the middle of the battlefield that is a 300 Fox Way morning -- women running every which way, all needing to use the shower or the toaster or the phone at the same time as someone else -- and Blue insists on picking out Adam's clothes for him.

"I can dress myself," Adam says.

"Right. Tell me again what the dress code for your wedding is? Oh wait, you can't, because you didn't plan it."

"I wasn't allowed to. I was _explicitly forbidden_ from planning it. There is no reason for you to shame me about this."

Blue shoots him an unimpressed look, all the more effective for her being elbow deep in his suitcase. There's nothing like knowing someone can see your underwear to make their disapproval of your life choices stick.

She assembles a surprisingly casual outfit for Adam: his favorite jeans, a worn green t-shirt, a button-up with that's missing a button, a pair of work boots. It's not what he expected to wear on his wedding day, but when he blinks at her she shoos him out of the room so she can get dressed.

That leaves him fighting for bathroom time with Orla. It's a losing battle. No one takes bathroom time from Orla, who doesn't give a damn that he's getting married today because _marriage is a sham, though I guess if I had hooked Ronan I'd try to hold onto him too._ Adam gets dressed in the attic, because even Gwenllian is less traumatizing than Orla taking a shower while yelling through the door about how hot his about-to-be-husband is.

Blue's outfit matches his in the loosest sense possible: it's casual, everyday, and mostly green. She had some trick for prying Orla from the bathroom, so her hair is perfect -- by Blue's standards -- though she didn't finish breakfast, so she's holding a cup of yogurt in one hand and a spoon in the other as she rushes Adam out of the house.

"I can drive," he offers, already knowing she'll refuse.

"No you can't," Blue says, and downs the rest of the yogurt like a shot. She licks the spoon clean and sticks it in a planter by the driveway, presumably to collect and wash later. Adam has no idea why she is his friend, except that he trusts her with his life and enjoys her company and thinks she's wonderful and perfect and clever.

None of which should overrule the does-shots-of-yogurt thing, but, eh. Love isn't logical.

Blue drives, and it doesn't take Adam very long to figure out that they're driving to Cabeswater. He watches her out of the corner of his eye for a few miles, to get a sense of things, before it hits him.

Things are what you say they are, in Cabeswater.

Opal meets them when they park the car, right on the border of the forest.

"Hello," she says, and Adam doesn't know if he takes her hand or if she's already reaching for his.

"Hi," he says.

"Ready?"

"Yeah." He squeezes. "You?"

She nods.

He has to let go of her hand a few times as they make their way through the woods. Cabeswater is not, never has been, tame, and if it recognizes the importance of today that doesn't make it anymore inclined to behave itself. They have to scale some steep hills, climb in a few places; Adam falls on his ass more than once.

Opal never falls, never falters. She follows the heartbeat of a forest that reshapes itself around her. Once, Adam would have been able to find his own way as surely as his wonderful child is now; he would have been able to feel the beat of his pulse and _know_ he was heading in the right direction.

And he still does, in a way. Because he's heading for Ronan.

They arrive in the clearing without any fanfare; just a break in the trees and suddenly there's Matthew, Declan, Henry, Gansey --

Ronan.

Adam falters. It's only been a week since he saw Ronan at graduation. He's had four years of reunions and departures to get used to this moment. To returning home.

But it stops him cold every time.

Opal tugs him forward. She leads him up to Ronan and takes one of Ronan's hands, laces it together with Adam's before she lets go and steps away.

"You made it," Ronan says.

"I had really good motivation." God, he wants to kiss Ronan. That's probably not allowed. "So all of that wedding planning, the flowers and everything, was that a trick, or -- "

"No, there's a huge fucking party waiting at the Barns. But." Ronan shrugs. "You wanted something small."

Adam gives in. He leans forward and kisses Ronan's cheek, right near the corner of his mouth, then lingers for a second, breathing him in. "It's perfect."

"All right, save some of that for the end of the ceremony, lovebirds," Henry says, stepping up in front of them. "This is going to be short and sweet because Ronan is as creative as he is patient."

Adam drops one of Ronan's hands for a second to flip Henry off. Ronan laughs under his breath and rubs his nose against Adam's cheek.

Adam can't stop smiling.

Henry continues undeterred. "Our family is gathered today in the eyes of the tree lights and living dreams and all the other unfathomable magic shit that goes down here to watch Adam and Ronan make a terrifying and life-altering mistake together."

Gansey coughs. "Is the editorializing necessary?"

"I assume that if our fearsome wedding-planner-slash-groom did not want editorializing he would not have asked me to officiate," Henry says. Adam pulls back to study Ronan's face. He looks like he enjoys Henry's theatrics but doesn't want to give that fact away.

And then he meets Adam's eyes and smiles, wide and uncomplicated.

"But perhaps we should move on to the vows," Henry says. "Blue?"

He steps back and Blue steps in front of him, walks right up until she's immediately in front of their clasped hands. There's a slight incline, so she doesn't look quite as preposterous as she might otherwise when she puts her fists on her hips and glowers at Ronan.

Ronan glowers back at her. Adam bites down on his laughter.

"Ronan Lynch," Blue announces. "Do you swear not to fuck this up?"

"Christ, Sargent, what kind of question is that?"

"It's your wedding vows, Lynch. Answer the question."

"No, I don't swear not to fuck up. I fucked up three times yesterday. I fucked up letting you write my vows. I'm going to fuck up tomorrow."

Blue nods, satisfied. "Do you swear to keep trying even when you fuck up?"

"Yeah," Ronan says. "I do."

"Do you swear to look up the word 'compromise' in the dictionary every once in a while?"

Ronan huffs. "Fine."

"Do you swear to pull Adam out of his own head when he gets stuck in there?"

Adam blushes. It's embarrassing sometimes, having people who know you. His eyes drop to his hands.

Ronan runs a thumb over Adam's.

"When I can. He's stubborn."

A smile tugs at Adam's mouth in spite of the blush. "I'm going to remember you said that."

Blue points at him, though he can only see it at the corner of his vision. He's still feeling shy. "You're going to get your turn. I'm not done yet."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Hrmph." Blue rounds on Ronan once more. "Do you swear to always have a home for Adam?"

"Yeah. Always."

"And do you swear to understand if sometimes he needs to leave that home?"

Blue isn't pulling any punches. Adam has a job lined up in DC, a glorified internship with a little more money and a lot more prestige; the contract's just for a year, but they both know that Henrietta doesn't have the kinds of jobs that he's spent his life reaching for. Any way it goes, there's some hard decisions in his future.

But he's going to make those decisions with Ronan, and it's not like there's any point in pretending life's going to be easy forever. Ronan's not one for pulling punches, either.

 _All or nothing_ , Adam thinks, and he looks up.

Ronan is looking back at him, completely steady. No doubts. "Yeah. I do."

Adam squeezes Ronan's hand. Focuses on the pressure on his fingers when Ronan squeezes back, too hard for comfort. Adam doesn't care; he's glad for the contact, for the sensation grounding him. He feels strangely exhausted, for all that he knows the wedding hasn't taken that long; like all of the emotion coursing through him has wiped him clean, left nothing inside of him but the barest bones of his person. He's strangely at peace with the version of himself that is left inside his skin: this Adam has friends and family and love. He can figure the rest of it out.

He's so caught up in staring at Ronan, studying the smile that's graced his face -- not uncomplicated, but no less genuine than before -- that he doesn't think about the fact that Blue's gone silent.

So he's not prepared for it, when Blue draws in a shaky breath and asks, "Do you swear to treasure him?"

She sounds choked up, and Adam cannot risk looking at her. He keeps his eyes on Ronan, but Ronan just blinks and nods, a couple of times, like he can't talk either. _Fuck_ , they're all a bunch of idiots, and Adam wonders, with a touch of hysteria, who is going to break first.

Out of the corner of his eye, as he blinks a couple of times in quick succession, he sees movement, and he turns to look and --

Oh, there it is.

"Are you crying?" he asks Gansey.

"Are you surprised?" Gansey asks.

"Only that you carry a handkerchief. When did that happen?"

"I'm fairly certain I'm supposed to be asking you the questions." Gansey dabs at his eyes again and takes Blue's place in front of them..

Right. Adam's best man got to interrogate Ronan about his intentions; it stands to reason the reverse would happen. Hell, it isn't like this would be the first time. That's a tradition going back to the very beginning of their relationship.

But it feels huge, and dangerous, and savage, right now. Adam doesn't know if it's the eyes of their family or the shade of Cabeswater's trees or the finality of the moment, but it takes all of his courage to stand his ground and meet Gansey's eyes.

"Adam," Gansey starts, and then stops himself, and Adam sees it in his eyes: he feels how huge this is, too. "I used to think it was my job to look out for Ronan," he admits, carefully. "But it wasn't, exactly, and it's not your job now. So I'm not going to ask you to take care of him," and Adam shuts his eyes.

"Okay," he says when he's ready.

"Adam. Do you swear to talk to Ronan even when it's hard?"

It's just like Gansey to start with a question that demands an answer to itself. "I do."

"Do you swear to ask for help when you need it?"

Adam opens his eyes and glares at Gansey for that, which gets a snort of laughter out of Ronan. "I do."

"Do you swear not to let being right get in the way of being happy?"

And Gansey had the nerve to accuse _Henry_ of editorializing; Adam's got half a mind to call him out, but Ronan breathes in too quickly. Adam looks back at him and finds a frown crossing his face.

Ronan recognizes him in that question, Adam thinks with a sinking feeling. And then it hits him: Ronan recognizes both of them in that question. His strong, beautiful, all-or-nothing Ronan has his own doubts and worries he's been carrying around through this whole process, and their pride getting between them is far from an unlikely scenario.

But dammit, it's his wedding and he has a say in it too.

"I do," he says, "I swear," and the tension melt off Ronan's face.

"Do you swear to be truthful and compassionate?"

"Those don't come easily to me," Adam tells Ronan. "But yeah. I swear."

"Do you swear to love him?"

Adam looks at Ronan and feels pain, and fear, and nausea, and anxiety, and awe, and joy, and laughter, _and --_

"Yeah," he says. Trust Gansey to freak them out and then end on the easiest possible question. "I do."

"All right," Henry says. He's stepping back up, taking Gansey's place, but it feels like he's a long way away. "Before we move on, is there anything either of you want to say?"

"Yeah." Adam surprises himself a little. He's doesn't usually offer to speak when he doesn't have to.

But it is a special day.

"I'm not good with words when it counts, but. Ronan. I didn't understand you at all when we met, I'm pretty sure I hated you." His breath catches, almost a laugh. "We don't always get off to a good start, do we? But the more I know you the more I love you. And I was so screwed up back then, but you didn't save me. You helped me to save myself. And then you invited me into your family and it took me a while to figure out, but that's what I want."

"Fuck," Ronan says, and it's _everything._ "You're really good at this. I should have let you plan some of it."

Adam shrugs. "I like this." He pauses, but hell, if he can't say it now, when can he? "I like when you surprise me."

" _Adam._ " Ronan presses his forehead against Adam's. "You know I'm stupid about you, right?"

"I know."

"I'm going to keep being stupid about you for the rest of my life, so I need you around to be smart and shit."

"Oh, how the poets of old weep with envy," Henry says sarcastically, but Adam would destroy a millennia of poetry for this. "Are you going to put a ring on that or what, Lynch?"

"He already did," Adam points out.

"Yeah, so you need to get your revenge," Blue says, and appears by his side.

Adam takes a half-step away from Ronan, far enough to reach for the ring box in Blue's hands. Opened, it reveals a deceptively simple gold band. It's only upon looking at it closely that Adam discerns the very fine pattern etched into it, interwoven lines that remind him of a Celtic knot.

"Dream ring?" he asks Ronan.

"Dream ring," Ronan confirms, and scowls as he adds, "and no, it doesn't _do anything_."

"Shame," Adam says, sliding the ring onto Ronan's finger. "You should have made a ring that does something cool."

Ronan stares at him for a second until Adam's facade breaks. He smirks.

"You are such a little shit," Ronan says. "I can't believe I married you."

"You haven't, yet."

"Fuck, right. Where -- " and he turns just as Gansey appears at his elbow with a second ring box. He takes the ring out and slides it onto Adam's finger to rest next to the engagement ring, and Adam has no clue what it looks like, because he's looking at Ronan and Ronan's looking at him and none of the rest of it really matters, when he gets right down to it.

From a thousand miles away Henry says, "By the power invested in me by the internet I now pronounce you married," and then finally, finally, "you can go ahead and kiss each other," and they do.

-

"That was surprisingly not terrible," Adam says as they depart Cabeswater. It would be easier to traverse the forest if he let go of Ronan's hand, but then he would be _letting go of Ronan's hand_ , and that's not a trade off he's willing to make. "I'm disappointed. I don't think that was even ten percent trying to piss me off."

"Just wait," Ronan promises him. "The reception is going to be a nightmare, you're going to hate it."

-

The reception isn't a nightmare. It is overwhelming, or it would be if Adam weren't already overwhelmed. As it is, he feels like he's only catching glimpses of it:

Gansey cries again.

Maura sniffles into a tissue while Calla grabs three glasses of champagne at once.

Declan gives a long, very boring toast, and when Adam looks over to whisper snide commentary he's perturbed to see that Ronan is pointedly _not_ crying.

All of the people Adam likes best from New York are there, which means that they knew he was getting married today before he did and _they didn't tell him_ , but he can't find it in himself to resent their keeping a secret.

Opal clomps around in her "orthopedic" shoes, the ones that make her feet look human-shaped, and is still a better dancer than Matthew.

Blue pulls them aside, radiant despite the fuck-ugly gown she put on while the rest of the wedding party changed into suits, and makes them sign their marriage license "because the most romantic part of a wedding is the paperwork."

And through the whole day, Ronan: smiling; laughing; picking a pointless argument with Henry; mocking Declan for not beating them to the altar; stealing Blue from Gansey for a dance, surprisingly graceful; stealing Gansey for a dance, rather less graceful; and always, always coming back to Adam, pressing the palms of their hands together, sneaking kisses when no one is watching, breathing words into his left ear that Adam can't hear and doesn't need to. He already knows.

Adam rests his head on Ronan's shoulder. "Love you too, you sap."

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked this fic you can [reblog it on tumblr](http://toast-the-unknowing.tumblr.com/post/163582479950/faith-hope-all-that-bullshit-shinealightonme)!


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